Hello, Darkness

by Sandra Brown

  Stan quailed. “Why would it even cross your mind that I could—”

  “Because you’re a fuckup. You have been since your mother expelled you. From the moment you drew breath, she knew you were a mewling little turd. I think that’s why, when she got sick, she just lay down and died.”

  “She had pancreatic cancer.”

  “Which gave her a good excuse to finally rid herself of you. Your father also knew you weren’t worth spit. He didn’t want to be burdened with you. That’s why he sucked so hard on his pistol, it blew the back of his head off.”

  Stan’s throat closed. He couldn’t speak.

  Wilkins was relentless. “Your father was weak to begin with and your mother made him weaker. He felt it was his duty to remain married to her even though it was her personal goal to fuck every man she met.”

  Cruelty was his uncle’s lifeblood. Having experienced it for thirty-two years, Stan realized he should be used to it. He wasn’t. He glared at Wilkins with unmitigated hatred. “Father had affairs, too. Constantly.”

  “More than any of us know, I’m sure. He poked every woman he could in order to convince himself that he still could. Your mother didn’t permit him in her bed. He seemed to be the only man she had an aversion to.”

  “Besides you.”

  Wilkins closed his hand so tightly around his glass of bourbon that Stan wondered why the crystal didn’t break. He had scored a direct hit and it felt good. He knew exactly where his uncle’s disdain for his mother was coming from. Countless times, Stan had heard her laugh lightly and say, “Wilkins, you’re such a disagreeable toad.”

  Coming from his mother, who adored men, that was a colossal put-down. Moreover, she had never shown any fear of Wilkins, and that would be the ultimate insult. He thrived on making people afraid of him. With her, he had failed utterly. Stan delighted in reminding him of it.

  A slurp of bourbon restored him. He said, “Considering your dysfunctional parents, it’s little wonder you have problems with sex.”

  “I don’t.”

  “All evidence being to the contrary.”

  Stan’s face turned hot. “If you’re talking about that woman in Florida—”

  “Who you tried to hump over her fax machine.”

  “That’s her version,” Stan said. “It wasn’t like that. She was all over me until she got cold feet, afraid someone was going to walk in.”

  “That’s not the only time I’ve had to bail you out because you couldn’t keep your pants zipped. Just like your father. If you had half the aptitude for business that you do for fornicating, there would be more money in the till for all of us.”

  That, Stan suspected, was the crux of Uncle Wilkins’s animosity. He couldn’t touch the sizable trust fund Stan’s parents had set up for him, which included not only what he had inherited upon their deaths, but a large share of the corporation’s earnings ad infinitum. The terms were irrevocable and irrefutable. Even Wilkins with all his power and influence couldn’t invalidate his trust and steal his fortune.

  “That time at the country club swimming pool, what were you trying to prove when you exposed yourself to those girls? That you could get it up?”

  “We were eleven years old. They were curious. They begged me to see it.”

  “I guess that’s why they went screaming to their parents. I had to shell out a few grand to keep the incident under wraps and to keep you from being permanently banned from the club. You got expelled from prep school for whacking off in the shower.”

  “Everybody whacked off in the shower.”

  “But only you got caught, which indicates an absence of self-control.”

  “Do you intend to parade all my adolescent indiscretions past me? Because if you do, I’m going to order a drink.”

  “We haven’t got time for me to parade all your indiscretions past you. Not during this meeting.” He checked his wristwatch. “I’ll be leaving shortly. I told the pilot I wanted wheels up at six.”

  May you crash and burn, Stan thought.

  “What I want from you,” Wilkins said, “is a denial that you’ve been making dirty phone calls to that woman deejay.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because you’re a sick little fucker. It cost me a fortune for your shrink to tell me what I already knew. Your parents created a mess—you. And left me with the job of cleaning it up. I’m just glad that—so far at least—all your ‘indiscretions’ have been with women.”

  “Stop it,” Stan hissed.

  He wished he had the nerve to leap across the table, take hold of his uncle’s short, fat neck, and squeeze until his bulging frog eyes popped from their sockets and his tongue protruded from his fat lips. He would love to see him dead. Grotesquely, painfully dead.

  “I didn’t make those phone calls,” he said. “How could I? I was in the building with Paris when those calls came through from public telephones miles away from the station.”

  “I’ve checked it out. It’s possible to reroute calls, make it look like they’re coming from one phone when they actually originate on another. Usually a disposable cell phone, one that’s been stolen perhaps. Makes the calls virtually untraceable.”

  Stan was flabbergasted. “You checked out how it could be done, even before you asked me if I’d been doing it?”

  “I haven’t gotten to where I am by being stupid and careless like you. I didn’t want one of your so-called indiscretions blowing up in my face. I don’t want to be left looking like a schmuck for trusting you to keep your dick where it belongs. As it is, I’ve got to answer to the board of directors for paying you a salary when it’s a challenge for you to replace a lightbulb.”

  Wilkins fixed him with an unwavering stare and held it until Stan said, “I didn’t rig any phone calls.”

  “The only thing you’re good at is tinkering with gadgets.”

  “I didn’t rig any phone calls,” he repeated.

  Wilkins eyed him shrewdly as he took another drink from his glass. “This Paris. Do you like her?”

  Stan kept his expression impassive. “Yes, she’s okay.”

  His uncle’s stare turned harder, meaner, and, as usual, Stan yielded to it. He always did, eventually. And he hated himself for it. He was a mewling little turd.

  He fiddled with the soggy cocktail napkin beneath his untouched club soda. “If you’re asking me if I’ve ever entertained sexual thoughts about her, then yes. On occasion. She’s attractive and has that whiskey voice, and we spend hours alone together every night.”

  “Have you tried with her?”

  He shook his head. “She made it plain she’s not interested.”

  “So you did try and she turned you down.”

  “No, I never tried. She lives like a nun.”

  “Why?”

  “She was engaged to this guy,” he said in a tone that conveyed his exasperation over the uselessness of this conversation. “He was in a private hospital up near Georgetown, north of here. Very exclusive. Anyhow, Paris went to see him every day. People around the station told me she did this for years. He died not too long ago. She took it hard and still isn’t over it. Besides, she’s not the type who could, you know . . .”

  “No, I don’t know. Not the type who could what?”

  “Who could be seduced.”

  Wilkins stared at him for an interminable length of time, then peeled enough bills from his money clip to cover their tab. He placed them beneath his empty glass as he stood up. Reaching for his briefcase, he looked down his wide, unsightly nose at Stan.

  “ ‘Seduce’ is a word that means you have to persuade a woman to have sex with you. Not at all confidence inspiring, Stanley.”

  As his uncle moved away, Stan said under his breath, “Well, at least I’m not so butt ugly I have to pay for it.”

  Stan learned one thing from the meeting. There was nothing wrong with his uncle’s hearing.

  • • •

  The mobile home was no longer mobile. In fact, it
had been in place for so many years that one corner of it listed. In front, a cyclone fence enclosed a small yard where nothing grew except Johnsongrass and sticker patches. The only nod toward landscaping were two cracked clay pots from which sprouted faded plastic marigolds.

  A neighbor kid had kicked a soccer ball over the fence and into the yard but had never bothered to retrieve it. It had long since deflated. A two-legged charcoal grill that had been bought at a garage sale years before had been propped against the exterior wall of the house. The bottom of it was completely rusted out. The television antenna on the roof was bent almost to a right angle.

  It was derelict, but it was home.

  Home to three neglected and foul-tempered cats who’d never been housebroken, and a slattern who was addicted to coffee and Winstons, which she continually puffed in spite of the wheeled oxygen tank to which she was connected by a cannula.

  She was wheezing heavily when the door to the mobile home creaked open, causing a wedge of sunlight to cut across the picture on her television screen. “Mama?”

  “Shut the goddamn door. I can’t see my TV with that light shining on it, and my story’s on.”

  “You and your stories.” Lancy Ray Fisher, aka Marvin Patterson, came in and shut the door behind him. The room was plunged into foggy darkness. The black-and-white picture on the television set improved, but only slightly.

  He went straight to the refrigerator and looked inside. “There’s nothing in here to eat.”

  “This ain’t the Luby’s Cafeteria and nobody invited you.”

  He scrounged around until he came up with a slice of bologna. On top of the fridge there was a loaf of white bread. He pushed aside one of the cats so he could get to it, then folded the bologna into a stale slice. It would have to do.

  His mother said nothing else until the soap opera went into a commercial break. “What’re you up to, Lancy?”

  “What makes you think I’m up to something?”

  She snorted and lit a cigarette.

  “You’re going to blow yourself up one of these days, smoking around that oxygen tank. I only hope I’m not here when you do.”

  “Make me one of them sam’iches.” He did and as he passed it to her, she said, “You only come around when you’re in trouble. What’d you do this time?”

  “Nothing. The landlord is repainting my apartment. I need a place to stay for the next few days.”

  “I thought you were hot and heavy with some new girlfriend. How come you ain’t staying with her?”

  “We broke up.”

  “Figures. She find out you’re a con?”

  “I’m not a con anymore. I’m an upstanding citizen.”

  “And I’m the queen of Sheba,” she wheezed.

  “I’ve cleaned up my act, Mama. Can’t you tell?”

  He held his arms out to his sides. She looked him up and down. “What I see is new clothes, but the man underneath ’em ain’t changed.”

  “Yes I have.”

  “You still making them nasty movies?”

  “Videos, Mama. Two. That was years ago, and I only did it as a favor to a friend.”

  A friend who had paid him in cocaine. For as much as he could snort, all he had to do was get naked and screw. But then Lancy had started screwing one of the “actresses” off the set as well as on, and the jealous director began complaining about the size of his “package.” In a medium where size mattered, Lancy just wasn’t making the grade. “Nothing personal, you understand.”

  But of course Lancy had taken it personally. They’d had a parting of the ways, but not before Lancy made the director bleed and beg that his own package be left intact.

  That had been a long time ago. He didn’t do hard drugs now. He didn’t play in dirty videos. He had improved every aspect of himself.

  But apparently his mother didn’t think so. “You’re just like your daddy,” she said as she noisily chewed her sandwich. “He was a shifty bastard, and you got the same sneaky look about you. You don’t even talk natural. Where’d you learn to talk so fancy all of a sudden?”

  “I’m working at the radio station. I listen to people on the radio. I’ve picked up speech patterns from them. I’ve been practicing.”

  “Speech patterns, my ass. Wouldn’t trust you as far as I could throw you.”

  She went back to watching her soap. Lancy moved down the narrow hallway, stepping around piles of cat shit, and squeezed into the tiny room in which he slept when he was between incarcerations or employment, or at times like this when he needed to disappear for a few days. This was his last resort.

  He knew his mother searched the room each time he left, so when he pried up the loose vinyl tile beneath the twin bed, he did so with the fear of what he would find. Or, more to the point, not find.

  But the cash, mostly hundred-dollar bills, was there in the small metal box where he’d stashed it. Half of it rightfully belonged to a former partner, who’d been convicted of another crime and was now serving a prison sentence. When he got out, he would come looking for Marty Benton and his share of the loot. But Lancy would worry about that when and if the time ever came.

  The amount had shrunk considerably from what it was originally. He’d used a sizable portion of it to buy his car and new threads. He’d rented an apartment . . . well, two, actually. He had invested in the computer that was now inside the trunk of his car.

  His mother would rag him about throwing away good money on a foolish contraption like a computer when she was still watching her stories in black and white. She didn’t understand that in order to succeed at any endeavor, legal or ill, a person had to be computer savvy. Lancy had trained himself to be. To avoid the old bitch’s harping, he would take his laptop inside and access the Internet through his cell phone only when she was asleep.

  He counted his cash, stuffed several of the bills into his pocket, then returned the rest to their hiding place under the floor. This was his emergency fund, and he hated like hell having to tap into it now. Although this definitely qualified as an emergency.

  Shortly after being released from his last incarceration, he’d landed a good job, but had been too stupid to appreciate it. One of the dumbest things he’d ever done was steal from the company. Not that he had thought of it as stealing, but his boss sure as hell had.

  If he’d asked to purchase the cast-off equipment for a nominal amount, the boss probably would have told him to take what he wanted, that he was welcome to it. But he hadn’t asked. He had reverted to his old ways. Catch as catch can. Get it while the gettin’s good. One evening before leaving work, he had helped himself to the obsolete equipment, thinking no one would miss it.

  But somebody had. He, being the only ex-con on the payroll, was the first person the boss suspected. When accused, he confessed and asked for a second chance. No dice. He was fired and had escaped criminal charges only because he returned everything he’d taken.

  The experience had taught him several lessons, primarily never to tell the truth on a job application. So when Marvin Patterson applied for the job at the radio station, he checked the No box to the questions about arrests and convictions.

  Lousy as it was to mop up after other people, that job had been a boon. When he got it, he felt that fate, or his fairy godmother, or some power beyond himself had compelled him to steal that stuff. If he hadn’t been fired from that first job, he wouldn’t have had the way cleared for him to work at 101.3.

  Not only had the janitorial job been gainful employment that kept his parole officer pacified, it had kept Lancy from having to deplete his stash. And, most important, it had allowed him to be near Paris Gibson every night.

  Unfortunately, there was no returning to that job now. Nor could he go back to his apartment, write a check on Marvin Patterson’s bank account, or use an ATM to withdraw from it, all of which were surefire ways of letting yourself be found when you didn’t want to be.

  The minute those cops called telling him to stay put, that they were on t
heir way over to talk to him about harassing Paris Gibson with a dirty phone call, he knew his goose was cooked. Just like that, he’d become an ex-con again and had acted accordingly. He’d grabbed his cell phone, his computer setup, some clothing, and cleared out.

  His first stop had been his second residence, a dump of a place that he kept leased under an assumed name. What might seem like an unnecessary luxury had proved itself to come in handy.

  But as he approached the parking lot, he spotted a police car at the IHOP across the street. He had driven past without pulling in. He told himself it was probably just a coincidence, that if the cops were lying in wait for him to show up there, they wouldn’t be in marked cars. But he was taking no chances.

  He had destroyed Marvin Patterson’s fake IDs. Hello, Frank Shaw.

  He’d swapped the license plates on his car, too, switching them for some he had stolen months ago.

  No matter what anybody said about reform and rehabilitation, no cop, or judge, or decent, law-abiding citizen was going to extend to an ex-con the benefit of the doubt. You could swear on the Good Book that you were a changed man. You could beg for an opportunity to prove yourself. You could promise to become a contributing member of the community. It didn’t matter. Nobody gave a con a second chance. Not the law, or society, or women.

  Especially women. They’d do all manner of sex with you but got squeamish when it came to a criminal record. There they got finicky. There they drew the line. Did that make sense?

  Not to Lancy. But whether or not it was reasonable, that was the rule. Since he didn’t conform to the rule, he had tried changing himself into a man who did. He dressed better, talked better, treated women like a gentleman would.

  So far, the transformation hadn’t met with stunning success. He’d had a few promising prospects, but eventually they’d gone the way of his other relationships. It was like there was a stain on him that could be seen only by women.

  He just couldn’t make them like and respect him. Starting with his own mother.